‘Aside from the absurdity of bringing in any foreign guestworkers at all at the height of a global pandemic … this move has re-opened a security and fraud vulnerability…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump is green-lighting a controversial foreign-worker program that prioritizes tens of thousands of foreign job-seekers at a time when millions of Americans are struggling amid the Wuhan virus shutdown.
According to the U.S. State Department, most applicants won’t even be interviewed prior to receiving a guest-worker visa.
But that’s a recipe for disaster, says the pro-legal immigration group Center for Immigration Studies.
“Aside from the absurdity of bringing in any foreign guestworkers at all at the height of a global pandemic that just threw millions of Americans out of work, this move has re-opened a security and fraud vulnerability in the temporary worker visa program that career homeland security officials have fought for years to close,” wrote Jessica Vaughan, CIS director of policy studies, in a new issue brief.
The seasonal guest-worker program, or the H-2 visa program, has more than doubled over the past decade, from 103,324 in 2010 to 280,183 in 2018.
Vaughan says the H-2 explosion is the result of government catering to special interests.
“Clearly the Department of Agriculture is pleased to deliver the cheap labor that U.S. growers have become accustomed to—rather than adopting farm modernization trends used successfully in the rest of the developed world,” she said.
And just as many Wuhan virus stay-at-home orders have effectively closed “non-essential” American businesses, the State Department has deemed H-2 workers “essential.”
“The H-2 program is essential to the economy and food security of the United States and is a national security priority. Therefore, we intend to continue processing H-2 cases as much as possible,” the State Department website says.
Allowing foreign workers to gain special-interest protections to take American jobs contradicts Trump’s outspoken immigration rhetoric. So does allowing them to enter the U.S. without security interviews or basic background checks.
In no way does the current H-2 policy enhance national security, says Vaughn. At a minimum it promotes fraud.
“Interviews are critical to preserving the integrity of our temporary visa programs—especially the guestworker programs,” she wrote. “Interviews are especially important given the chronic problems with fraud and abuse in these seasonal worker programs.”